Emily and Heidi will be writing about a whole host of things, contributions including social media how-to guides, case studies, tips, tricks and much more besides — all designed to help you, the businesses that are new to social media and want to know more.

If there’s something you’d like to know more about, leave a comment and we’ll look into writing something to help you get a better grip of social media for your business.

So how did Jozy Altidore and Ryan Babel score social networking own goals? They spoke out of turn on Twitter, when they should have left their legs to do all the talking — and here’s what we can learn from their exploits.

Aside from a recorded interview, or people willing to be a witness to what was said, attributing words to a particular person has always been open to question. So what’s changed? Twitter, as just one example, but social networking as a whole. Why? Because now the accused is the author.

Professionalism is about being dignified and composed in the face of adversity. Being aware of your influence and using that influence in a responsible and measured way.”

For both Jozy and Ryan, publicly criticizing the decisions of their respective managers caused a lot of problems. So, what can we learn from their exploits? First of all, let’s look at the fall-out from their unguarded comments comments:

they undermined their own standing, bringing into question their professionalism;

they undermined the authority of their managers, damaging what trust and respect they’d earned;

their own team mates might now think twice before speaking in confidence with them, knowing those comments could also become public;

their own standing and position within their teams was damaged, leaving them with challenges off the field, as well as on;

they hardly endeared themselves to their fans, their fellow professionals, or the public at large.

Setting aside the football and / or even sport-specifics, this kind of lapse in judgment could easily occur in an customer-facing business (which, by definition, most sports are), if team members aren’t properly briefed beforehand.

Now, there’s nothing any business can do to prevent their staff from starting their own fan Page on Facebook, or having a Twitter profile, but what they can do is be clear about what they expect from them and what the likely consequences will be if those team members do not adhere to the rules of the game.

A lesson in team work

In my ebook, The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media, security specialist Paul Maloney has already provided some sound advice for dealing with the negatives of social media.

Start with the training — show employees what damage thoughtless comments on a social network can cause to them, their colleagues and the company.

Guidelines — detail the things you expect them not to post about, and the things they can post about.

Useful examples — use the example of a guy called Kevin Colvin (a bank intern who’s indiscretions caused him great personal embarrassment and eventually cost him his job) to demonstrate the personal impact, his photo appeared in major newspapers around the world, potentially damaging his future career prospects.

Refresher training — follow up the training with procedures and guidelines to ensure everyone has the same understanding. The policies should detail the consequences of ignoring them, which could be potentially career-ending.

Ultimately, this is about managing people as much as it is about encouraging them to express their skills. To paraphrase world cup winning manager Sir Alfred Ramsey, as a manger, you might not always pick your best best players, but you will try to pick your best team.

So my ebook, The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media, is now starting to earn its keep. As of today, the Emily Cagle Communications website and blog goes live. So what’s that got to do with my ebook? Emily is a reader turned client.

In the end, it’s not rocket science; I give advice and help where I can. Emily downloaded my social media ebook and then came back with a few questions about her website, and since I’m a web designer and developer, I was only too happy to accept her work.

Emily had already made the decision to start a company blog, but her concern was that the website and blog would look like too very different animals. As you’ll see from the end product, the two flow into one another seamlessly, as if they were made for each other.

But it’s not all one way — Emily is now bringing her not inconsiderable public relations’ services to Octane, hopefully helping me grow my business.

If you think your business website could do with face lift, a tuck, a trim, a complete overhaul, or maybe you’re looking for a little more social media know-how, then get in touch straight away and let’s see if I can help!

British insurance comparison website Compare The Market have something of a hit on their hands with Aleksandr Orlov, their mongoose mascot and face on Facebook. Clearly, cute sells, and can also go viral.

Aleksandr is a cute Meerkat character and founder of Compare the Meerkat, a fictitious company, pretending to be mildly annoyed that the two companies are being confused as being the same.

Take a look at the number of comments and “likes” (votes of appreciation) each of his updates get and you’ll see that they have a hit on their hands.

Rather cannily, Compare The Market know that they need a better bridge between Aleksandr’s Compare the Meerkat and themselves, or they risk just coming over too strong on the commercial front, which is why they have the Compare the Meerkat spoof website, littered with videos, bloopers and the option to join their Page on Facebook, as well as following Aleksandr on Twitter, who has nearly 12k followers.

According to Alexa (not the most accurate assessment of web traffic by any means), the Compare the Meerkat website is ranked in the top 25k, with several thousand daily visits, while Quantcast doesn’t (as of writing) have enough data to go on, most likely because the website is too new.

“In the first 3 days of the campaign over three quarters of the monthly quotes target had been achieved. The year on year uplift in quotes was 45% and vitally, over 50% of the site traffic in the first week was going directly to comparethemarket.com. Finally, the number of quotes is up by 90% on the same period last year.”

Sadly, he doesn’t provide a source for his data. However, I suspect the figures to be a favourable reflection on the success of Compare the Meerkat’s .. I mean, Compare the Market’s social media marketing campaign.

I suspect Compare the Meerkat succeeds because of the non-commercial nature of Aleksandr’s updates, which are usually casual, light and funny. Plus there’s the cute Meerkat being pushed into tens of millions of living rooms all over Britain. People want to share this stuff, which then becomes self-sustaining after a while.

Replicating the viral aspects is always going to be the hardest challenge of all, since the backbone of the campaign is the animated Aleksandr and the videos, which aren’t cheap to reproduce. But the rewards are huge. Even for someone like Compare the Market, the kind of exposure they’ve attracted would have cost considerably more via more mainstream marketing channels.

Using social media to manage your message

In terms of planning and execution, as social media marketing goes, this one went all the way to eleven (a reference to another spoof, of the heavy metal kind). All of the ingredients were there, from the micro-website, to the Twitter and Facebook profiles, as well as the official video on YouTube.

As I see it, there are some basic, entirely reproducible ingredients for social media marketing success:

So what can we take away from this? I guess most of you won’t have the kind of budget or resources these guys have at their disposal, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn from their efforts — just remember that Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are all free to use, which counts for a lot.

After too much thinking and not enough doing, the Social Media Marketing Technology blog is finally on Twitter!

What does this mean to you? Every time I find an interesting, topical social media article I think you’d benefit from, I’ll post that article onto my Twitter feed. It’s that simple.

What kind of social media articles will I be Twittering about? I look for the social media articles with a business slant — the ones that I feel offer practical advice for businesses, or for those who’re totally new to social media and want to know how best to spend their time, money and effort.

In reality, there are few shortcuts to success. And while social media may be tipping that balance in our favour, there’s still a lot of work to be done when planning, building and then executing your social media marketing campaign.

Like anything else, everything is hard until it’s easy! How does something suddenly become easy? Well, yet again, there are few shortcuts, so there’s often nothing sudden about success! And for things to become easy requires hours and hours or effort, patience, practice and the capacity to learn from one’s failures — of which there will most likely be many.

6 social media myths debunked!

And on that note, you may want take a look at Business Week’s debunking 6 social media myths, which is a great leveling of the most common myths associated with social media, and here are highlights of those 6 myths:

Social media is cheap, if not free. “Yes, many of the tools that can be employed in social media marketing are free to use.” Ultimately, it’s still time and effort, with a lot of planning and preparation. The apparent simplicity of certain aspects of social media — such as setting up a blog for your business, or starting a Twitter account to name but two — obscure the truly massive and amorphous nature of social media itself.

Anyone can do it. “A surfeit of whiz kids and more experienced marketers are claiming to be social media experts and even social media gurus.” The truly great thing about social media is that the entry cost is low. However, without a plan and the social network to further that plan, just like any other marketing channel, social media marketing could be a very costly venture.

You can make a big splash in a short time. “Sure, sometimes a social media campaign can produce substantial and measurable results quickly.” As always, timing is everything, but if you’re looking for immediate success, then you’re either back to relying on paying big money for big ideas, unbelievably good timing, or blind luck!

You can do it all in-house. “Wrong! You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience — a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who often reinvent the wheel or use the wrong tools.”

If you do something great, people will find it. “Quite simply, that never was true.” You’re back to relying on unbelievably good timing, or blind luck again — hope was never any kind of substitute for planning. Not only must you know your audience, but you must also understand the terrain and the best choice of tools; knowing where your audience is to be found will prove pivotal in the selection of tools you’ll use to engage with those people.

You can’t measure social media marketing results. “You can use a variety of methods, including mentions on blogs and in media; comments on the content; real-time blog advertising results, and click-throughs to your company website.”

For me, the best aspect of social media is the ability to build genuine communities, which persist long after the mail shot and the press release and the advert have since faded from people’s memories.

On the 10-11th of February, the Social Media Marketing Technology blog, in association with Brighter Marketing, will be bundling The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media ebook with their own brand new book, The Brighter Marketing Bible for Small Businesses.

Joanne Morley co-founder of Brighter Marketing, a Leeds-based marketing agency and co-author of their new ebook expects a significant number business people across Yorkshire (the north east of England) and Britain to be informed of their ebook release.

“The Brighter Marketing Bible for Small Businesses has been written to help you reduce your stress levels and to save you the time and money you may currently be ploughing into marketing that doesn’t seem to work, no matter how much you put in. Its goal is to give you the knowledge and tools you need to develop a highly effective marketing approach that can help you achieve the results you want from marketing.”

I suppose it goes without saying that this is something of a momentous occasion for me, and Brighter Marketing, too.

So far, there’s been hundreds of downloads of The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media ebook from people all over the world, all eager to learn more about social media. The deal with Brighter Marketing means even greater exposure to my ebook, which has already won considerable praise from many of the people who’ve downloaded and added my ebook to their list of must reads.

Thanks to everyone of you who downloaded my ebook and I sincerely hope you all benefit from what I’ve learned about social media over the years.

In an attempt to avert a “potential PR nightmare” Ford Motor Company read the social media signs and avoided a head-on legal crash, where their reputation would have felt the full force of the collision.

Sure, it’s a given Ford would have won the legal battle, had things gone that way. But in winning the battle, Ford would have risked losing the social media war. And on the web, the survivability of a brand is all to do with winning the hearts and the minds of the very people you’re appealing to. Scott Monty, Ford Motor Company’s social media strategist knew this only too well:

“Ford was threatening to sue The Ranger Station, a fan website run by Jim Oakes that was selling counterfeit products using Ford’s logo. Ford was demanding that The Ranger Station surrender its website URL and pay Ford $5,000 in damages.”

What happened next was all too predictable; Jim Oakes used his social media smarts to whip up a storm of protest against Ford’s heavy-handed approach:

“Ford instantly felt the backlash as the fan community quickly caught wind of the lawsuit and began blogging and tweeting angry comments. Monty jumped on Twitter, followed the chatter and sent tweets to his 5,600 followers saying “I’m in active discussions with our legal department to resolve it. Please retweet.””

And the moral of this story is? Be responsive and attentive to your customers, to your potential customers and to your brand, wherever that brand may be. Because in this day & age, Super Advocates — those that speak the loudest and are the most listened to — come in all shapes and sizes.

The world of marketing is changing. Now that social media has a foothold, the one-way marketing campaign is being replaced by the two-way dialogue between business and their customers.

However, social media is still a confusing buzz word to some, so there’s clearly much work to be done to educate people to the benefits of social media for businesses — which is why I wrote The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media ebook in the first place.

“We interviewed more than 30 executives and managers in both large and small organizations that are at the forefront of experimenting with Web 2.0 tools. From those conversations and further research, we identified a set of emerging principles for marketing.”

Salvatore offers up some telling, highly praise-worthy and positive examples of how social media can be an integral, cost-effective part of your businesses overall marketing efforts:

“A marketing manager at the company says that, as a way to obtain consumer feedback and ideas for product development, the online community is much faster and cheaper than the traditional focus groups and surveys used in the past.”

Additionally, the transition to social media needn’t be a hill to be climbed by all, but a gradual transitionary learning curve with great promise and potential:

“In one case, a company found a popular blogger who had spoken highly of the company’s brand. Just prior to launching a new product, the company sent the blogger a free sample, inviting him to review it with no strings attached. The end result: The blogger wrote a favorable review and generated a flood of comments. So the company got nearly free publicity and feedback.”

The arguments for introducing social media into your business grow. What’s holding you back?

Social Networking is a great way for businesses to find new people who’re interested in the same things as yourself.

There’s a lot to be said for being connected to smart, resourceful and equally well connected people. If ever you’re in need of a little feedback, assistance, help or even just a spare pair of eyes, a strong social network will help expedite those things.

So here’s a quick introduction to social networking for business people.

What can I do on a social network?

First of all, before we talk about what the best social networks are, you need to think about your goals:

Are you looking for industry news?

Are you looking for “thought leaders” in your field?

Are you trying to promote yourself / your business?

Are you looking to build a strong support network?

If you have a company blog, then finding new people to comment on your articles, or to write articles for you could be your goal. Or, if you’re a knowledgeable / creative type, maybe you want to share what you know with others. Or maybe you’re trying to gather a collection of like-minded individuals to help you create something truly amazing.

For you, there may be other goals, but it’s as well to think about and then decide how:

you’re going to approach your goal;

how much time you’re going to commit to those goals;

and finally, how you’re going to measure your goals.

What are the benefits of social networking?

In this case, the benefits are sometimes the same as the goals; finding industry news, thought leaders, a venue to promote yourself or your services et cetera. But there are more:

Low cost of entry — most social networks are free to join.

Becoming part of an international community.

Over time, the prospect of becoming a thought leader yourself.

Fast and mostly accurate sources of trustworthy advice.

But like anything else, what you get in return is highly dependent on the effort you put in.

What are the top social networks for businesses?

There are possibly hundreds of social networks out there, but the emphasis really has to be on those that offer clear business benefits:

LinkedIn — LinkedIn is an online network of more than 30 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries. When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments. Your profile helps you find and be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you. Your network consists of your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of qualified professionals.

Facebook — “Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.”

Ecademy — “Ecademy is a Business Social Network founded in 1998 now with millions of users of the site each year worldwide. Ecademy is unique as business people connect both online on the web site and offline at networking events and 1-2-1 meetings.”

Xing — “The web-based business network XING has grown into one of the leading professional online networking platforms. Business professionals use XING to find useful contacts, important information, new business opportunities, employees and ideas. Based on its members’ level of activity, XING is a market leader in global professional online networking.”

Twitter as a social network

Aside from the more mainstream and business-focused social networks, it might be worth considering Twitter, which I’m sure you’ll have heard plenty about recently.

It’s hard to summarize what Twitter is, largely because it can be whatever you want it to be. Quite unlike LinkedIn, Ecademy etc, there are no formal groups; anyone can follow (befriend) anyone else.

I’ve been on Twitter for several years and it is possible to harness the collective knowledge of your followers to fulfill many, if not all, of the goals outlined previously.
Of course, there are more social networks for businesses, which you’re free to pick, choose and explore.

Being a part of a social network is, for the most part, little different to any real world social network. The only real differences are how you interact with your fellow residents — all you need is an internet connection and a web browser (like Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox).

By setting out what you want to achieve, how and when, social networking can become a legitimate, efficient and cost-effective means of discovery and promotion for your business…